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Omar Khayyam: Deorientalized and Retranslated

Omar Khayyam: Deorientalized and Retranslated. M. Kamiar. Mountain ViewWorld Class Educational Entertainment, 2022. 294 p. ISBN: 979-8843721077.

This is a (Re)translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat from its original Farsi into English more faithfully, making sure the connotation, inferences, and meanings of the verses penned by Omar Khayyam in Farsi are maintained. In the process of writing about the Orientalist approach of Edward FitzGerald’s original translation, the Racist Orientalists’ role in destroying the Orient was explained. In the heat of the summer of 2020, most people in the world had to face the two pandemics of COVID-19 and racial hate crimes committed by the supremacists.

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili Rubáiyát and Its Reckonings. Annmarie Drury
In: Modern Philology 121 (2023) 2, p. 169-191

Abstract

Shaaban Robert’s Swahili poem Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili (Omar Khayyam in Swahili) (1952), translated from Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1859), provides a study in the reach and transformation of British literature of the nineteenth century and in the significance of translation within a colonial sphere. Robert (1909–1962), a major Swahili author, was employed by the colonial service for all his working life, and in terms of his receipt of FitzGerald’s poem and the very language he used, the Standard Swahili created by the British colonial state, his translation was imbricated in a colonial context. He exercised significant creative agency as translator, plumbing FitzGerald’s poem for underlying elements of Khayyám’s Persian and translating FitzGerald’s rendering of Khayyám to highlight affiliations between Khayyám and Swahili poetic tradition. At the inception of Robert’s translating of FitzGerald lay a troubling experience of dislocation that resonates with FitzGerald’s creation of his translation and the reception of that poem and that helps us understand the affective associations belonging to Omar Khayyam kwa Kiswahili. Thus, Robert nurtured the cosmopolitan connections of Swahili poetry while creating for Standard Swahili—a variety of Swahili with little poetry to call its own—a poem bearing a sense of poetic tradition.

Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat

Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat. Khayyam’s Quatrains as Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyat. Ismail Alghamdi, Mohammed Albarakati.
In: Journal of Translation and Language Studies, 5 (2024) 1, pp. 65-81.

Research studies from around the globe on Omar Khayyẚm’s Persian quatrains and their translation into English by the poet, writer, and translator Edward Fitzgerald, are in abundance. Researchers are, in general, in praise of the translation and give credit to Fitzgerald for making Khayyẚm a world-renowned poet. However, the translation has rarely been approached from a socio-political perspective, or a look into Fitzgerald’s ideological manipulation of the original. The present research study investigates two issues with Fitzgerald’s translation- ideological manipulation and selective translation. The study also looks into Khayyẚm’s life and his works. It probes into the effects this translation left on the literary scene. The study involves a comparative literary translation analysis to compare and contrast the elements found in Fitzgerald’s translation and two Arabic translations. Employing Lefevere’s (1992) theory of ‘translation as rewriting,’ this paper assesses the extent to which a translator’s ideology can lead to a misrepresented product of translation (Lefevere, 1992). The study adopts textual analysis as a research method to capture the epicurean elements recurrently emphasized by Fitzgerald in his translation.

Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát

Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát. Sylvia Yount.
American Art, 29 (2015), 2, pp. 112–118.

The distinctive work and career of Elihu Vedder have proven difficult to categorize in the history of American art. Part academic naturalist, part progressive symbolist, the artist is best remembered for his allegorical and literary paintings. Yet a more contextual examination of Vedder’s production challenges the standard view of him as a visionary out of step with the art world of his time and unconcerned with the broader cultural reach of his work.

Love and Death in Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Love and Death in Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Akela Reason.
American Art, 29 (2015), 2, pp. 119–125.

Spiritual uncertainty figured in many of Elihu Vedder’s works. The artist acknowledged his fascination with this theme, writing in his autobiography, The Digressions of V., “it delights me to tamper and potter with the unknowable, and I have a strong tendency to see in things more than meets the eye.” Especially preoccupied by the mystery of death, Vedder returned to the subject again and again. Death comes in many forms in Vedder’s art—from “all-devouring” sphinxes presiding over desert wastes to the fratricidal conflict of the Old Testament, and devastating medieval plagues.

Implications of Mystic Intoxication in Chinese and Iranian Poetry

Implications of Mystic Intoxication in Chinese and Iranian Poetry. R. Weston.
The Undergraduate Historical Journey, 1 (2014) 1, pp. 5-9.

In analyzing the works of Chinese Tang poet Li Bo (701-762),1 one notices the reoccurring reference to “drunkenness” or drinking of wine; though it can be taken at face value to represent a state of being in the literal sense—that is, what appears to be an intoxicated stupor—it seems more practical to consider a more figurative meaning. Namely, it is possible to interpret themes of wine and drunkenness as allegories for spiritual enlightenment, be it found in nature or simply life in general.

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Critical Celebrations of a Beloved Poem

FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Critical Celebrations of a Beloved Poem. E. Nakjavani.
Iranian Studies, 47 (2014), nr. 4, pp. 627-648.

Erik Nakjavani reviews and discusses two recent volumes on the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The first is ‘Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Famous Poem and its Influence’, by William H. Martin and Sandra Mason (Anthem Press, 2011). The reviewer discusses this work in respect of contemporary views about reception and assessment of poetry, by enthusiasts and devotees as well as scholars and academics. The second volume is ‘Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Popularity and Neglect’, edited by Adrian Poole, Christine van Ruymbeke, William H. Martin, and Sandra Mason (Anthem Press, 2011), in which he summarizes and discusses the separate essays.

Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam

Woestijn waar ik dit paradijs aan dank – Claes vertaalt FitzGerald vertaalt Chajjaam. B. Crucifix.
Filter 21 (2014) 2, p. 7-19.

Paul Claes is a notorious Flemish translator, most famous for his translations of classic and modernist texts; but he is also a novelist and a poet, a critic and a scholar. This article examines how translation and writing interconnects in Claes’s translations and pastiche of Edward FitzGerald’s (free) translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Because of a cultural difference in legal status and representation, translating and writing are often considered to be strictly separate activities, establishing a hierarchical distinction between ‘creative’ and ‘derivative’ modes.

Rescuing Omar Khayyam from the Victorians

Rescuing Omar Khayyam from the Victorians. J. Cole.
Michigan Quarterly Review, 52 (2013) 2, pp. 169-173.

The Rubaiyat or quatrains attributed to the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. circa 1126) of Nishapur were made famous by the loose rendering of Edward Fitzgerald, first published in 1859. Specialists in Persian literature now agonize over how many, if any, of these poems were actually written by Khayyam. For a century after his death he was not renowned as a poet, even to those who knew him and wrote about him. Slightly later sources occasionally attribute one or two, or some as many as thirteen, Persian quatrains to the scientist. The oldest substantial book of them giving him as the author is a 1460 manuscript from Shiraz now held in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (this was a principal source for Fitzgerald). Obviously it is very late, and eighty-two of the poems in it also appear in the divans or poetry collections of other authors.